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1 Masaryk University in Brno Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Miroslav Ježek Glottalisations in Today s London English B.A. Major Thesis Supervisor: PhDr. Kateřina Tomková

2 I declare that I have worked on this final year thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography section. Miroslav Ježek 2

3 Acknowledgments I am deeply indebted to the following people: Mr Dave Freestone who introduced me to all but one of my Speakers and showed me around London, Ms Nikki Rudcenko who made the whole trip to London possible, Mr Matthew Nicholls for his kind help with the correction of unclear passages in the recordings and, last but not least, I owe a particular debt to Ms Kateřina Tomková, my supervisor, for her invaluable help throughout the process of writing the present study. 3

4 Table of Contents TABLE OF CONTENTS...4 LIST OF PHONETIC SYMBOLS AND SIGNS GENERAL INTRODUCTION COCKNEY/ESTUARY ENGLISH/RP THESIS OUTLINE RESEARCH QUESTIONS METHOD THE HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH GLOTTAL STOP THE EARLIEST TRACES THE TWENTIETH CENTURY GLOTTALISATION IN PRESENT-DAY ENGLISH THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE GLOTTAL STOP THREE MAIN FUNCTIONS OF THE GLOTTAL STOP IN ENGLISH GLOTTAL REINFORCEMENT VS. GLOTTAL REPLACEMENT PHONETIC ENVIRONMENTS FAVOURING THE GLOTTAL STOP THE GLOTTAL STOP IN RP VS. COCKNEY GLOTTALISATION OF OTHER CONSONANTS CONSISTENCY IN THE USE OF THE GLOTTAL STOP METHODOLOGY OF THE PRESENT STUDY DATA INFORMANTS EQUIPMENT IDENTIFYING THE LINGUISTIC VARIABLE TRANSCRIPTIONS Article- transcription in RP Speaker 1- Reading Part Speaker 1- Speaking Part Speaker 2- Reading Part Speaker 2- Speaking Part Speaker 3- Reading Part Speaker 3- Speaking Part Speaker 4- Reading Part Speaker 4- Speaking Part Speaker 5- Reading Part Speaker 5- Speaking Part RESULTS OF THE RESEARCH RESULTS BY THE PHONETIC ENVIRONMENTS FAVOURING THE GLOTTAL STOP Glottalisation of Consonants Other Than /t/ Glottalisation of /t/ RESULTS BY INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS RESULTS BY GENDER RESULTS BY AGE TOTAL RESULT

8 0 General Introduction This thesis deals with the phenomenon of glottal replacement which is one of the most heavily stigmatised features of English. COGGLE (1994: 42) puts it very accurately: Using the glottal stop between vowels is a bit like wearing a tattoo: whether you realise it or not, certain doors will be closed on you. It is a statement about you and about where you belong, or where you think you belong, in British society. However, the significance of the glottal stop can hardly be overestimated for it appears to have been spreading rapidly in the past few decades and gaining more and more prestige. WELLS (1994: 3.2) observes that the increased use of glottal stops within RP may be attributed to influence from Cockney and other working-class urban speech. What started as a vulgarism is becoming respectable. The last sentence from WELLS quotation is crucially important it is the change in the attitude of the British towards the glottal stop that makes this feature worth looking into even more. The use of the glottal stop is no longer restricted to London (the local dialect called Cockney) and Glasgow (Glaswegian) although the two cities are still held as the home of the glottal stop (see Chapter 1). The glottal stop can now be found in the speech of people throughout Britain. Despite its rise in popularity in the rest of Britain, glottalisation is still considered to be primarily a feature of the urban accents in the aforementioned cities. It is only natural that this thesis focuses on glottalisation in Cockney because finding out what the situation in the home of the glottal stop is could shed more light on what is about to happen outside the capital of England. Also, in spite of numerous studies of urban accents throughout Britain 3, none of the current studies centres on the usage of the glottal stop in London, which is rather surprising since it appears sensible to assume that its status in London with London English enjoying certain amount of superiority (stemming from the fact that London is the capital) over other accents will help to predict the possible development of the phenomenon in the future Cockney/Estuary English/RP Formerly only people born within the sound of Bow Bells (WELLS 1982: 302) were considered to be true Cockneys (innermost suburbs such as Bethnal Green, Stepney, 3 see e.g. TRUDGILL (1987), WELLS (1982) and MACAULAY (1977) 8

9 Hackney, Shoreditch.etc.). Nowadays the term is used far more generally to denote basically all Londoners who preserve in their speech at least some of the features typical of the Cockney dialect. These include th-fronting, h-dropping, l-vocalisation, the diphthong shift and, of course, glottalisation. Unfortunately, the scope of the present study does not permit further explanation of the first four phenomena 4. Terminology grew one term bigger with the introduction of the term Estuary English (EE) by ROSENWARNE (1984: par. 2) who defines it as: a variety of modified regional speech [...] a mixture of non-regional and local south-eastern English pronunciation and intonation. If one imagines a continuum with RP and London speech at either end, Estuary English speakers are to be found grouped in the middle ground.. In short, people who speak EE are somewhere halfway between Cockney and RP 5. The most important aspects of RP include its non-localisability (it is impossible to distinguish where one comes from just by his/her accent), the fact that it serves as the teaching model to foreigners and that it is viewed as the ideal. As far as glottalisation is concerned, it is one of the features that help to mark the boundary between Cockney and EE with glottal reinforcement being typical of EE and glottal replacement typical of Cockney (both terms being discussed in Chapter 2. 3) Thesis Outline This thesis is basically divided into three parts, namely the theoretical part (Chapters 1 and 2), the practical part (Chapters 3 and 4) and the conclusion (Chapter 5). Chapter 1 deals with the glottal stop from the diachronic point of view. Chapter 2 presents the synchronic description of the glottal stop in present-day English including the physiology of the phenomenon. 4 see WELLS 1982 ( ) for a highly detailed description of the Cockney dialect 5 RP (Received Pronunciation) is a term coined by ELLIS ( : 23). Author s definition says that a received pronunciation [can be found] all over the country, not widely differing in any locality, and admitting a certain degree of variety. It may be considered as the educated pronunciation of the metropolis, of the court, the pulpit, and the bar. 9

10 The practical part gives a detailed description of the methodological approach including the problems encountered and their resolutions (Chapter 3) followed by the transcriptions of the recordings and quantitative results of the research (Chapter 4). Lastly, the thesis is concluded with Chapter 5 where the Research Questions from 0. 3 are answered Research Questions The present study is an empirical study of glottalisation in the speech of a group of people from London which seeks to explore the following Research Questions: 1) What is the phonetic and sociolingustic status of the glottal stop in the speech of today s Londoners? 2) Why is glotalisation viewed by many scholars as a shape of things to come? 3) Where exactly (in what phonetic environment) is glottalisation about to become a standard feature and where is it likely to remain stigmatised? 4) Glottalisation is traditionally connected with /t/. How frequent is the glottaling of other voiceless plosives and other consonants in general? 0. 4 Method It goes without saying that a thesis on accents and dialects cannot be done from anywhere but the very country whose accents one writes on and this thesis is no exception. A research trip to London was carried out in February 2006 with a view to gathering ample audio material and finding as many references to the glottal stop as possible in University College London English. The methodological approach adopted in this thesis is explained and described at greater length in Chapter 3. 10

11 1 The History of The English Glottal Stop This chapter attempts to describe the possible development of glottalisation in the past centuries. The task is, however, a very difficult one for glottalisation, being not distinctive, went almost totally unnoticed. It indeed brings about no change in meaning if one says butter with or without glottaling the /t/ and that is probably why J. C. WELLS (1982: 260) felt inclined to note that either this is a new, twentieth-century, phenomenon, or else no phonetician had previously noticed it. One explanation by the author of this study argues that the glottal stop is a feature of rough urban accents and as such it went unnoticed till the first half of the 20 th century simply because it was standard English that was regarded by phoneticians as worth studying The Earliest Traces MATTHEWS (1972: ) finds some little evidence that the glottal stop was used as early as the 17 th century. He found four words in churchwarden s records that were spelled in the following way: woostreet 1677 (Wood Street), Statues 1658 (statutes), ffleestreete 1624 and Lighfoots 1635 (of the last two MATTHEWS does not state the meaning, ANDRÉSEN (1968: 12) is convinced that they stand for Fleet Street and lightfoots). This evidence is, however, far from convincing. First, 17 th century spelling was still highly variable and therefore these might be just pure slips of the pen (ibid). And second, what is missing is some positive evidence that the plosives in question were replaced with the glottal stop (and not just left out). Two of the words given by MATTHEWS are names of London streets and were undoubtedly used considerably often in everyday conversation, thus it is plausible to suppose that in rapid speech some of the phonemes were elided 6. The next pieces of evidence date back to the 19 th century. ALEXANDER MELVILLE BELL, a Scottish phonetician and father of Alex. Graham Bell, mentions a mere glottal catch which replaces the letter /t/ in the West of Scotland 7. In another book of his, BELL gives even an example of such a glottal catch : butter [bu er] 8. 6 note that both ffleestreete and woostreet retain the /t/ at the end of the words. If the first plosives were replaced with the glottal stop, is it not likely that these would be glottalised as well? 7 BELL, A. M. Elocutionary Manual, 3 rd ed. London, (qtd. in ANDRÉSEN 1968: 12-13). Note that in the 1 st edition of this book from 1849 there is no mention whatsoever of the glottal catch. 8 BELL A. M. Visible Speech. London, 1867: 60 & 93. BELL uses [ ] as the symbol for the glottal stop (qtd. ibid) 11

12 A. J. ELLIS in his enormous five-volume book On Early English Pronunciation provides five more examples of the replacing glottal stop, all of them from Lowlands of Scotland 9. And finally, EUGENE H. BABBITT (1896: 8), secretary of the American Dialect Society, mentions the use of the glottal stop in the New York dialect: A substitution of the glottal catch for t in words like letter, butter, written, etc., is common, though by no means regular, among the schoolchildren 10. Surprisingly, no direct mention of glottalisation in Cockney so far. And yet there are several studies of 19 th century Cockney some of them, namely SMART 11 (1812) and MILLARD 12 (1882) dealt directly with faulty pronunciations. None of them include the glottal stop in their lists of vulgarisms. Nor is there anything about the glottal stop in literary Cockney where, particularly in the books by Charles Dickens (for example Sam Weller, the popular Cockney figure from The Pickwick Papers), one would expect at least a mention of it. One allusion to what might have been glottalisation is in ELLIS ( : vol. 5, pp ). He cites Prof. A. J. D. D ORSEY s disillusionment with the fact that the final consonants are so feebly uttered that it is sometimes impossible to tell whether the pupils say life, or like, or light. No positive evidence of glottalisation with which ELLIS was definitely familiar (he described the usage of it in Scottish English) and Prof. D ORSEY talks not only about plosives k and t but also about f, which is a fricative and as such is hardly ever glottalised The Twentieth Century The earliest direct mention of the glottal stop in England can be found in SWEET (1908) who observes it in some North English and Scottish dialects. As an example he gives the Glasgow pronunciation of water [ωα! r] 13. The first explicit reference to glottalisation in Cockney dates back to the famous book Pronunciation of English by D. JONES (1909: 47). He says that /t/ tends to be replaced by the glottal stop in Scottish and London English and his example is I have not got one transcribed into IPA symbols as [ΑαιΝγΟ?ωαν]. 9 (qtd. in ANDRÉSEN 1968: 14) 10 (qtd. ibid) 11 SMART, BENJAMIN H. Grammar of English sounds. London, 1812 (qtd. in ANDRÉSEN 1968: 19) 12 MILLARD, JOHN. Grammar of Elocution, 2 nd ed. London, 1882 (qtd. ibid) 13 [!] is SWEET s symbol for the glottal stop 12

13 O. JESPERSEN (1909) 14 goes one step further as he distinguishes between glottal reinforcement and glottal replacement (see chapter 2. 3). And he is also the first phonetician to note that the usage of the glottal stop is not limited to dialectal speakers. The fact that the glottal stop is firmly established in Cockney English is confirmed by Outline of English Phonetics by D. JONES (1918: 161). He says: t at the termination of a syllable is replaced by? in many English dialects. Thus in London dialect mutton, fortnight, butter are commonly pronounced µα?ν, φο:?ναιτ, βα?. Interestingly enough, only the first /t/ in fortnight is glottalised. As it was said above, by then (World War I) the glottal stop had found its place in the speech of Londoners. All the studies of Cockney dialect after the WWI (e.g. MATTHEWS 1938, 1 st ed., FRANKLYN 1953, SIVERTSEN 1960) confirm the presence of the phenomenon in question and the only really new piece of information they give is about the ever-increasing frequency of it. ANDRÉSEN (1968: 18), who gives by far the most detailed account of the development of the glottal stop, arrives at the following conclusions that perfectly sum up what has been said so far in this chapter: 1. The use of the glottal stop for reinforcement or replacement is first recorded in the West of Scotland (1860), and then, step by step, in the East of Scotland (1889), in the North of England (1908), in places in the Midlands and in London (1909), and in Kent (1913). Outside this pattern falls E. H. BABBIT S reference to its occurrence in New York in The first reference to the glottal stop are to its occurrence in local dialects. In 1909 O. JESPERSEN refers to it as occurring not only among dialectal speakers (Modern English Grammar, part 1, Lond ). 3. The earliest reference are to the glottal stop reinforcing or replacing [t]. Not till 1909 are [p] and [k] explicitly mentioned. So the widespread assumption (confirmed by all the Speakers from the present research) that the home of the glottal stop is in London turns out to be erroneous. Presumably, only a few Cockneys would believe that. 14 JESPERSEN, OTTO. Grammar of English, part 1. London, 1909: (qtd. in ANDRÉSEN 1968: 16) 13

14 2 Glottalisation in Present-Day English The present chapter deals with the physiology of the glottal stop (International Phonetic Association, abbr. IPA, symbol?, IPA number 113) and then provides the description of the numerous types of the glottal stop in today s English The Physiology of The Glottal Stop The glottal stop also called glottal catch (SIVERSTEN 1960) or glottal plosive (GIMSON 1994) is the sound made when the obstruction to the airstream is formed by the closure of the vocal folds, thereby interrupting the passage of air into the supraglottal organs. The air pressure below the glottis is released by the sudden separation of the vocal folds (GIMSON, 1994: 154). GIMSON goes on to say that the stop is regarded as voiceless for there is no vibration of the vocal cords and adds that there is also a theory that views the glottal stop as neither voiceless nor voiced since in the articulation of [?] the vocal folds are closed whereas in the articulation of other voiceless sounds (e.g. /p/, /s/, /f/) they remain wide open (ibid) Three Main Functions of The Glottal Stop in English These are given in ANDRÉSEN (1968: 9): a) it serves more or less regularly as a syllable-boundary marker, being inserted between two vowels belonging to different syllables, especially when the second syllable carries strong stress, e.g. in [ri {κσν]. b) any vowel that occurs initially in the morpheme may have a glottal stop inserted before it for the sake of emphasis, e.g. [Ιτσ {βσ λυ:τλι ρθν]. c) many speakers use a glottal stop before, or even in place of, [p] [t] [k] in certain positions. E.g. the word fortnight may be pronounced [φο:?τναιτ] or [φο:?ναιτ]. This occurrence of the glottal stop is known as the reinforcing glottal stop and the replacing glottal stop respectively Glottal Reinforcement vs. Glottal Replacement This is the fundamental division of glottalisation in English. WELLS (1982: 260) defines the former in the following way: The voiceless plosives /p, t, k/, and also the affricate /tσ/, are in England often preceded in certain syllable-final environments by a glottal stop [?] [ ] Because the [?] is inserted before the oral closure 14

15 in effected, and thus masks the approach phase of the oral plosive, it is referred to as Preglottalization 15, or Glottal Reinforcement. In other words, a glottal closure precedes an oral closure. In cases when there is no oral closure at all (the plosive being totally replaced with [?]) phoneticians talk about glottal replacement. The most significant implication of this is that the lack of opposition is lost, therefore whip, wit and wick are all pronounced homophonously as [ωι?] (WELLS 1982: 323). But WELLS adds that the bare glottal stop is far more common replacement of /t/ than of /p/ or /k/ (ibid) Phonetic Environments Favouring The Glottal Stop Although the precise details are not easy to state, these are the conditions that are according to WELLS (1982: 260) essential: (i) it occurs only when /p, t, k, tσ/ are in syllablefinal position (including in certain syllable-final clusters); (ii) it occurs only when /p, t, k, tσ/ are preceded by a vowel, a liquid, or a nasal. Bearing these conditions in mind, WELLS goes on to give eight environments where glottalisation is possible (ibid) 16 : /p/ /t/ /k/ (a) # true C stop talking quite good look down (b) # L or S stop worrying quite likely look worried (c) V stop eating quite easy look up (d) pause Stop! Quite! Look! (e) true C stopped, capsule nights, curtsey looks, picture (f) L or S hopeless mattress equal (g) 17 [µ, ν, Ν ] 18 (happen) button (bacon) (h) V or [λ ] happy, apple, stop it butter, bottle, get im ticket, buckle, lick it 15 the present study sticks to the terms glottal reinforcement and glottal replacement. ANDRÉSEN (1968) uses the term Preglottalization for both types of glottalisation and although he gives his reasons for doing so (43-44), this term is avoided throughout this thesis in order to avoid confusion. 16 true C = true consonant (obstruents and nasals, not liquids or semivowels), L = non-syllabic liquids, S = semivowels, V = vowels. 17 for case (g) to be relevant, underlying / ν/ must have coalesced to [n ] by Syllabic Consonant Formation; for happen and bacon, moreover, [ν ] must have become bilabial or velar respectively through Progressive Assimilation. 18 [Ν] has the sign of syllabicity above, not below as [µ] or [ν]. 15

16 2. 5 The Glottal Stop in RP vs. Cockney With the help of WELLS well-structured table the following discussion will draw the line between the usage of the glottal stop in RP and London urban accent. As far as the former is concerned, SIVERTSEN (1960: 111) claims that some writers (she mentions D. JONES and his book Pronunciation of English, 233) consider the usage of [?] as a replacement for /t/ when followed by some consonants common in RP. The examples she gives would fall into category (a) in WELLS table. WELLS (1982: 261) extends the usage of the glottal stop to categories (b) and (e) adding that some younger RP speakers use plain [?] for /t/ in environment (c). SIVERSTEN (1960: 113) also mentions that in RP the glottal stop is used before syllabic nasals and sonorants, i.e. before unstressed / µ ν Ν λ/. However, this statement of hers seems to be rather arguable as the use of the glottal stop in words such as bottle or bottom is generally regarded as rather Cockneyish. WELLS (1982: 326) strictly distinguishes the use of [?] before a syllabic nasal [ν ] and syllabic lateral [5 ] with the former being extremely widespread, and may [ ] possibly be considered to extend into RP, while the latter is felt to be strongly Cockney-flavoured. To sum it up, the glottal stop certainly is present in RP, definitely in category (a), presumably also in categories (b) (c) and (e). But in RP phoneticians only speak about t- glottaling other plosives, namely /p/ and /k/ seem to be left out, the only exception being when /p/ or /k/ is in a word-final position and the following consonant is homorganic as in stop playing [ στθ? πλειιν] or cock crow [ κθ? κρ Υ]. The situation in Cockney is far clearer glottalisation is present in all eight environments given by WELLS, and also covers /p/ and /k/ although with much less frequency. Particularly category (h) words such as butter [βς? ] give Cockneys away. The norm for /p, t, k/ in Cockney is a bit different from RP. These plosives are mostly aspirated even in the intervocalic and final environments, e.g. upper, utter, rocker, up, out, rock, where RP is traditionally described as having the unaspirated variants (WELLS 1982: 322). Often these are affricated, too. These affricated and/or aspirated variants (in the positions where RP has no aspiration or affrication) are almost invariably preglottalised (for instance art [Α:?τ s ] ). The only position where /p, t, k/ are never aspirated in Cockney is that after /s/ as in stock. 16

17 Other variants for /t, p, k/ in intervocalic position include: voiced flap [ ] 19 as in better [ βε ] (SIVERTSEN 1960: 118) and preglottalised devoiced lenis plosives [d ], [β ]and [γ ] as in later [ λςιδ ], paper [πςιβ ] and baker [βςιγ ] (WELLS 1982: 324). SIVERTSEN (1960: 119) gathers from her research in Bethnal Green that in Cockney English the affricated variant is being looked upon as too posh for a Cockney to use: [ βετ s ] (better) is posh, [ βε ] is normal and [ βε? ] is rough. WELLS (1982: 325) adds another interesting and even rougher variant that can be found in London accent, namely zero variant as in better [βε ]. WELLS (1982: 324) uses category (c) expressions as those capable of distinguishing an educated London accent from traditional RP, e.g. [ {? Ιζ] that is, [κωαι? Ιιζι] quite easy. Two years later, ROSEWARNE introduced a new term Estuary English (see chapter 0.1.) so today it could be argued that people who glottalise the /t/ in quite easy speak Estuary English Glottalisation of Other Consonants Although the glottal stop sometimes does serve as the replacement of other consonants as well, such types of glottalisation are far less frequent than those of /p, t, k/. Out of the types of glottalisation in question, /d/-glottaling is the most frequent one. WELLS (1982: ) gives the following examples: bread and butter [ βρε?ν βς? ], Edward came [ ε?ω? κςιµ], good God [ γυ? γουδ]. He goes on to stress that the glottal stop occurs with increasing frequency in negative modals such as I didn t [Α δ z Ι?ν?τ s ] or wouldn t you [ ωυ? νϕα]. It is certainly plausible to suppose that /d/-glottaling occurs particularly in rather idiomatic phrases (bread and butter, good God) or in words of extremely high occurrence in everyday language (negative modals). Indeed, the researcher s utterance that s what I m trying to get rid of with the words in bold pronounced in the following way [ γε? ρι?] was instantaneously corrected by Speaker 3 with the explanation that leaving the /d/ out is impossible. Other consonants that, according to WELLS (1982: 327), may be glottalised include /f/ safer [ σςι? ], different [ δι?ρ ν] and /v/, particularly words that involve the word of such as of course [? κουσ], a bottle of whisky [ βθ?λ? ωισκ ι] and also give em 19 WELLS (1982: ) uses for the same thing the symbol [4] and calls it an alveolar tap. He finds it used even across word boundaries as in got it [ γθ4ι?]. 17

18 [ γι? µ]. However, it is important to emphasise that these are by no means the usual realizations of /f/ and /v/ in these environments (ibid). /Τ/- and / /-glottalisation is even rarer, two examples given by WELLS (ibid) are Southend [σ{:? ενδ] and other [ ς-? ]. But it has to said that these dental fricatives hardly ever occur in Cockney, being replaced with labiodental fricatives /f/ and /v/ (apart from wordinitial positions where glottalisation is not possible anyway). This feature is called TH Fronting Consistency in The Use of The Glottal Stop The last subchapter is devoted to a highly disputable topic how consistent is the use of the glottal stop? VACHEK (1960: 61) is convinced that it is a very consistent phenomenon and as an example he gives he has been talking about it about eighteen months [ι:ζβι:ν το:?ιν βα:?ι? βα:?αι?ι:νµα Τσ]. However, this goes against the theory that most speakers whose repertoire includes the glottal stop are capable of replacing [?] with either of these [τ, τ, τ s,, δ ] under certain circumstances (e.g. job interview or any other occasion when their accent matters). Indeed, this is confirmed by the present research, namely by Speaker 4 who in the space of a few seconds said the word gentlemen three times, twice with [?] instead of /t/ and once with the voiced flap [ ] (and there are far more examples in Chapter 3. 5). Further, this theory was also confirmed by Andrew Philip Oakland, M.A. who teaches British Accents and Dialects at the Pedagogical Faculty, Masaryk University, Brno. 20 See WELLS (1982: ). 18

19 3 Methodology of the Present Study The present chapter aims to explain how the author set about the task of gathering the audio material and processing the data. As this thesis focuses on London urban accent it was necessary to make a research trip to the capital of England (the research took place in February 2006) with two basic goals: to make recordings of authentic Cockney English to gather valuable information on the topic of glottalisation in the University College London Library It is well-formulated hypotheses (see chapter 0. 3) that form the very basis of every sociolinguistic study. Moreover, HUDSON (1996: 150) identifies five basic methodological stages which have by now been adopted by most sociolinguists: 1. selecting speakers, circumstances and linguistic variables collecting texts 3. identifying the linguistic variables and their variants in the texts 4. processing the figures 5. interpreting the results 3. 1 Data All the recordings were made in London where the researcher spent eight days. However important the recordings are, the observations made on natural unrecorded speech (SIVERTSEN 1960: 4) were of equal importance. Later, when it was possible to reveal the subject of the research to the informants, all the informants were asked questions about the usage of the glottal stop and their personal evaluation of the phenomenon. Unfortunately, finding a quiet place for the process of recording itself was an insuperable problem. The researcher had no other option but to visit the Speakers at work, which meant the recordings were made for instance in a pub, post room and library, the last being thought to be the possibly quietest place but, unluckily, the fire alarm was being tested on that particular day. 21 LABOV (1972: 71) says: to define a linguistic variable, we must (a) state the total range of linguistic contexts in which it occurs, [and] (b) define as many phonetic variants as we can reasonably distinguish. 19

20 The text for the Reading Part was chosen carefully with the help of the supervisor to ensure that it is easy to read with no difficult words to pronounce or understand. However, a few words did pose a problem to some of the Speakers (despite the fact that they were given some time to go through the passage before being recorded), namely words such as pivotal, impenetrable, distinctive Speakers 2 and 3 were evidently nervous of being recorded and to make matters worse Speaker 3 was further handicapped by not having his reading glasses on. To make matters worse, as the present study is centred on urban London English the Speakers with the exception of Speaker 1 and, partially, Speaker 4 were rather disadvantaged by not having received higher education. The content of the Reading Part text was chosen with the aim of stimulating the Speakers to talk about it in the Speaking Part. But most of them reacted with a mere shrug of the shoulders as if they had been aware of how poorly Cockney accent is viewed by outsiders Informants No specific criteria were applied for choosing the Speakers 22 apart from the fact that they naturally had to come from (or at least spend a substantial part of their lives in) London or its environs. The fact that four of the Speakers turned out to be currently living in Islington, central London, was a pure coincidence. All the Speakers were asked to talk about their own accents; however only Speaker 1 did say something about his accent. The rest insisted there was nothing interesting about their accents and had never encountered any difficulties as they all speak like this around here (Speaker 2). As a result they were allowed to talk about whatever they found interesting to ensure that their speech is perfectly natural without any modifications Equipment All the recordings were made with the help of Meizu X6 Digital MP3 Player with a built-in Microphone and the memory of 1GB. This Player offers several advantages over an ordinary tape machine it is lighter, has bigger capacity and, most importantly, the recordings are of far better quality. All the recordings are available on the CD that is an inseparable part of this thesis. 22 see Appendix 1 for further biographical info 20

21 3. 4 Identifying The Linguistic Variable As this study focuses on an urban dialect (and not on RP) it was decided to completely disregard instances of glottalisation that could be grouped under the heading of glottal reinforcement. The other type of glottalisation called glottal replacement is the core of the practical part of the present study on the grounds that the former type is by now well established in RP and would thus be well beyond the scope of this study whereas the latter type is still viewed as something typically Cockneyish. Once all the recordings were made an auditory analysis was carried out by the researcher. There were several reasons for choosing the auditory analysis. Admittedly, the acoustic analysis is more exact and widely used nowadays (see e.g. DOCHERTY et al. 1997) but despite the lower and lower price of necessary equipment, such equipment was not at author s disposal. And since the glottal reinforcement was not included in the research, it was much easier to spot the individual cases of glottalisation glottal replacement. Generally speaking, a sociolinguist may apply the auditory method (if the necessary equipment for the acoustic approach is not available) when the topic of the analysis is of consonantal nature but hardly ever when vowels are analysed for to recognise the extraordinarily subtle distinctions between vowels is beyond the capabilities of human ear. The supervisor, however, does not agree; she is strongly convinced that vowels are simply not tangible at all and neither X-ray nor computer measurement can, in any way, help Transcriptions The recordings are transcribed into IPA symbols. The transcriptions are basically phonemic with a few allophonic details that were considered necessary for the full and complete understanding of the transcriptions. Only those symbols given in the List of Phonetic Symbols and Signs (p. 6) are used. The transcriptions were made as detailed as possible (including all the phonetic peculiarities of London English) and, as a result, a great amount of difficulty was caused by inaccurate readings. Although the Speakers were instructed to skip all the words in the Reading Part of whose pronunciation they were unsure, they sometimes made an attempt before skipping the word or produced an absolutely nonsensical word. With 100% faithfulness being the ultimate goal, the following measures were adopted: skipped passages are indicated with three dots in the spelling transcription only; mispronunciations that eventually led to a correct pronunciation are written in the normal font whereas complete 21

22 mispronunciations are written in italics, both in the spelling and IPA version. The transcription in RP is included for the obvious reason of having a standardized version with which to compare the Speakers readings. Both female Speakers (Speakers 2 and 5) did read the title of the article despite having been instructed not to. It was decided to completely ignore the title both in the transcriptions and in calculating the results. There are two more problems that need to be mentioned here, namely syllabicity sign and aspiration. The former is rather ambiguous as it is often not possible to say with certainty whether a speaker pronounced a syllabic consonant, a non-syllabic consonant or a nonsyllabic consonant plus / / (ROACH 1991: 82). Finally, it was decided to adopt the approach set out in ROACH (1991: 78-82). The latter problem, unclear as it is in RP, is further worsened by the fact that Cockneys aspirate (or even affricate) plosives even at places where they are never aspirated in RP. The subtle difference between (heavy) aspiration and affrication in London English can hardly be correctly spotted just by human ear, it was therefore decided to include in the transcriptions only aspiration. 22

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